Hello! In the 15th post in my traveling series, we continue with the 4th post about our stay in the state of Rio de Janeiro. We are finally getting out of the city itself to see some of the other stunning parts of the state. That said, I found one more reason to go back to posting about Rio de Janeiro itself - but you will find out about that one in the next post on Thursday!

Today, I am going to focus on Silva Jardim - the stunning, but unknown municipality just a few hours ride away from the city. It has got everything to be the perfect getaway - mountains you can hike, forest you can visit, unique animals you can see and great farms with tons to do! On top of that, the signal is quite poor, so it only helps to let yourself focus on the rural life.

The Farms

The idea behind Silva Jardim's further development is tourism. The way the situation currently looks like is that there is a collaboration of multiple land owners, who are willing to use their land either to accommodate people or as places to visit - with multiple "rural life expositions" across those - just during our visit that lasted under a week, we have been shown various activities that are done by those that live there. These included making cheese, bread, extracting palm oil and much more.

The farms themselves can range from luxurious to adventurous, but they all have something in common: they are beautiful and extremely large. The picture above shows a pond that's simply a part of one of them. You can sit by the pond, get your feet wet and just enjoy the water. Many of the farms also offer access to great hikes which I will talk about in a bit.

They also include many physical activities that you can do - pretty much every single one of them has a swimming pool, there are football and basketball fields, we've also been horseback riding! On top of that, you can get additional services booked - we had a capoeira show that we even got to try participating in, as well as a small samba competition!

Below you can see the swimming pool, as well as the landscape the farms are surrounded by.

Golden Lion Tamarin

Another thing we have done during our time in Silva Jardim was go to see an animal that is currently only to be found in that area (except for some zoological gardens). The Golden Lion Tamarin, or Mico-leão-dourado, was nearly extinct, until a controlled reintroduction into the biological reserve in the Atlantic Forest was performed. There is currently just a few thousand of those beautiful monkeys in the wild and we got to go on a hike to see one of the places they frequent often.

The picture I have here is not great, as they are quite timid and we had to watch out not to scare them away - especially as we were with a fairly big group. I encourage you to check out the great effort that was made to ensure there is enough funding for the project to save this creature from extinction.

The Hikes

We might look happy on this picture, but this was a hell of a hike! We hike quite a lot whenever we are able to, but this one was actually extremely steep and intense. It was a mere 30-45 minutes, but the entire group that went for it was absolutely done afterwards. Note that only the 7-8 people that enjoy hiking did go - most just stayed on the farm.

As every hike though, it was completely worth it to see the views, as well as just get the satisfaction of a completed activity. At the top, a small house awaited us in which we could get some water, as well as sit down for a bit and have a chat before inevitably having to go back down and get back to work - after all, we went there as students to help with developing ideas for tourism in the area.

The other longer hike we've done was not really much of a climb - instead, it was a long walk through the forest with multiple streams of water that we had to jump over or simply attempt to pass by stepping on stones. It was extremely enjoyable to be there. I am a big lover of nature and nothing gives me as much tranquility as being surrounded by a lush forest. My girlfriend loves being active, so similarly she also found it tons of fun.

The end goal of that hike, which took probably just around 1h30mins one way, was to reach the waterfall you can see on the picture! We were also allowed to dip our feet in the water and sit around to enjoy the scenery. In the end we took some pictures and headed out to get back before it gets dark!

For me, being in Silva Jardim and experiencing all of this was truly amazing - I enjoy being off the grid, especially when I'm with my girlfriend, so it was a great time for us! That said, the fact it was still a trip in which we were surrounded by work and university people did make it slightly worse - it would be lovely to be there just the two of us. But even though I am complaining, we would never make it there without our university organizing this, and we met tons of great locals that we would not otherwise!